Popcorn business a Mom and Pop success

John R. Pulliam

Friday

May 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMMay 29, 2009 at 4:16 AM

If you make the drive between Abingdon and Galesburg on Illinois 41 on a regular basis, you’ve probably driven by Concession Specialists Inc.’s unassuming building hundreds of times; perhaps never noticed it. It might come as a surprise that inside that building, 400 pounds of popcorn are popped every Tuesday morning.

If you make the drive between Abingdon and Galesburg on Illinois 41 on a regular basis, you’ve probably driven by Concession Specialists Inc.’s unassuming building hundreds of times; perhaps never noticed it. It might come as a surprise that inside that building at 2000 Lacon St., 400 pounds of popcorn is popped every Tuesday morning.

The company is described as a “full-line concession supply wholesaler.”

The sweet smell of success

The first thing you notice as you walk toward the front door of Concession Specialists on a Tuesday morning is the sweet smell of popcorn. Carl and Lois Miller started the business back in 1968 in the garage at their home in Cameron. In 1992, the Millers moved the business to Galesburg.

Carl Miller, 74, began his career in the concession industry when he was just 10 years old, learning the ropes at H.T. Custer Park and Lake Storey.

“Back then, popcorn at H.T. Custer was a dime,” Miller said.

It’s worth noting that he worked for what was then Admiral for 18 years. In fact, his career with Concession Specialists and his time at Admiral overlapped.

“I worked at Admiral and ran this one day a week,” Miller said of the popcorn business.

To someone who has worked in factories, something about the 1,000-square-foot production room at Concession Specialists looks vaguely familiar. There are three poppers, with a metal hood above them.

Each of the three poppers pops two pounds of popcorn at a time.

“We can pop 150 pounds an hour,” Miller said. “Two of them poppers, believe it or not, I inherited with the business; they’re probably 40 years old.”

Mike Wheeler, who, along with his wife, Sheila, is planning to buy the business from the Millers, scoops Pop Weaver popcorn out of a gray, plastic container and puts it in a popper, along with the proper amount of popcorn salt.

“The whole secret to good popcorn is coconut oil, good salt and popcorn,” Miller said. “Coconut oil is the only oil on the market that won’t turn rancid.”

At the proper time, Wheeler hits a button and a liquid begins flowing through a tube into the popper.

“That will automatically pump the right amount of oil in,” Wheeler said.

When the corn is popped, the overflowing popper is turned over and the popcorn goes onto a belt. From there, it rides the conveyer belt to a “sifter.”

“Anything that goes through the one-half inch mesh, we throw away,” Miller said, correctly presuming that the reporter is old enough to remember when the kernels that are thrown away were referred to as “old maids.”

Kernels that are large enough then go up a belt to the hopper. Employee Brett Sargeant fills six-gallon, yellow plastic bags with popcorn, then uses a twist-tie to close them and puts the bags onto a flat cart. Once there are 68 bags on the cart, Miller moves it and another cart is moved into place.

Naturals

Carl and Lois Miller, in many ways, are naturals. As a boy, Carl lived on the south side, Kellogg and Prospect streets, in two railroad freight cars his father put together, then cut out windows.

He attended Douglas Grade School and what was then Lombard Junior High School. He said the best lessons he was taught by his teachers were “shut up, pay attention and the teacher’s boss.”

Beginning to work concessions at H.T. Custer and Lake Storey, Carl later was a lifeguard at Lake Storey. Miller is a popcorn expert. His expertise from Admiral and the concession business were keys to the surprisingly small production room. Miller is matter-of-fact about the production room, a marvel of engineering.

“Common sense, we built this production room,” Miller said modestly of where the ideas came from. Next to the production area for popcorn, there is a small area where cheese popcorn and caramel corn are made.

“I copied that booth area from the paint shop at work,” Miller said.

He said the booth at its full size would take up the entire room. He drew up the plans for a miniaturized version, then Galesburg Sheet Metal built the booth and the bins.

Lois Miller remembers when she was about 14, there was a caramel corn shop on Main Street, between the present location of Lindstrom’s and the post office.

“We lived in Knoxville,” she recalled. “I cleaned house for a lady in Galesburg. I’d get off the bus on Main Street so I could get some of that popcorn on the way home.”

Carl remembered a “Dr. Price” in Monmouth owned the Maple City brand of popcorn. When the doctor got old enough to retire, Carl and Lois bought him out. Some stores carry popcorn from Concession Specialists, which is sold under the Maple City Golden Glow brand, a carryover from the days the doctor in Monmouth had his popcorn business.

Pop and Orville

A conversation with Carl Miller is like taking a course in Popcorn 101. He talked almost reverently of the Pop Weaver operation in Van Buren, Ind. Concession Specialists buys all its raw popcorn from Pop Weaver.

“It’s got the highest quality we’re happy with,” Miller said. “The popping rate is real, real good. You have your different gradings of corn. The popping rate on this is about 95 percent or better.”

“They’ve got a white-glove operation over there,” Miller said. He said the facility can pop up to 160,000 pounds an hour.

Miller also knew the man perhaps most identified with popcorn, the late Orville Redenbacher.

“I talked to him many times when he used to be the field manager for Princeton Farms in Indiana,” Miller said. He said Redenbacher’s business popped wide open, becoming known nationally, because the white-haired icon of the industry remembered something his mother or grandmother probably did.

“Your grandma and mine, they’d raise popcorn at home,” Miller said. That popcorn, he explained, would be put in glass jars, which preserved the corn’s moisture and kept it fresh for a longer period of time.

Miller said that the downfall of many companies is, “They buy that good popcorn and stick it in plastic bags for six months and wonder why it didn’t pop.”

Concession Specialists guarantees the quality of its popcorn for 30 days. While it is put in huge, yellow bags, it turns over quickly, helping ensure freshness.

As the Millers prepare to exit the business, Carl Miller said of his decision to leave Admiral and open Concession Specialists, “It’s still the best move I ever made.”

John R. Pulliam can be reached at jpulliam@register-mail.com.

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